Aircraft carriers are not judged by deck length, catapult count, or launch videos alone. Their real value appears only when ships, aircraft, crews, sensors, and logistics function together under stress, and that is where China’s fast-rising carrier force remains largely unproven. The People’s Liberation Army Navy now operates three carriers: Liaoning, Shandong, and Fujian. On paper, the progression is striking. Liaoning began as a refurbished Soviet hull and became China’s training ground for modern carrier aviation. Shandong followed as the first domestically built step forward. Fujian is the major leap, an 80,000-ton CATOBAR carrier equipped with electromagnetic catapults, a capability previously associated only with the U.S. Navy’s most advanced flattops. That shift matters because catapults expand what a carrier can launch, how much fuel and payload aircraft can carry, and how efficiently a deck cycle can be sustained.
That hardware upgrade does not erase the central gap. China’s carriers have trained extensively, but they have never launched carrier fighters in combat. The distinction is more than rhetorical. Training can teach deck handling, launch timing, maintenance routines, and air-wing coordination. Combat exposes something else entirely: degraded communications, electronic interference, battle damage, uncertain targeting, fatigue, and the institutional ability to keep generating sorties after the first plan breaks down. As RAND noted in its assessment of military inexperience, experience alone does not guarantee advantage, but it does reveal whether doctrine, leadership, and integration actually hold up under pressure. That is still the unanswered question hanging over China’s carrier program.
The air wing tells the same story. China’s J-15 “Flying Shark,” derived from the Su-33, gave the navy a workable carrier fighter but not an ideal one. Ski-jump launches from Liaoning and Shandong force tradeoffs between fuel and weapons, limiting reach and strike flexibility. Fujian’s catapults should ease that penalty and support newer aircraft, including the J-15T, the J-35 stealth fighter, and the KJ-600 airborne early warning aircraft. In September 2025, Fujian reportedly launched three different aircraft types by electromagnetic catapult, a notable systems milestone. But qualification flights and combat-ready integration are not the same standard.
Support aviation may be even more important than the fighters themselves. A carrier becomes far more dangerous when it can extend radar coverage, manage the air battle, and keep aircraft on station longer. China has moved in that direction with the KJ-600, often described as the fleet’s airborne sensor hub, yet that capability is still maturing. A fully developed fixed-wing early warning aircraft changes detection range, interception timing, and strike coordination; without it, the carrier group operates with shorter reach and less awareness. China also still lacks a mature carrier-based tanker ecosystem, a limitation that narrows endurance across wide ocean spaces.
None of this means China’s carriers are hollow symbols. Their development has been steady, and training has expanded beyond coastal waters. PLA reporting said Liaoning had conducted more than 10 drills beyond the first island chain, and Chinese sources have highlighted increasing deck tempo and blue-water operations. Fujian also gives Beijing a platform designed for heavier launches, more diverse aircraft, and more credible far-seas operations. But the hardest part of carrier warfare is not building the ship. It is building the invisible system behind it: seasoned deck crews, practiced commanders, support aircraft, reliable maintenance, escort coordination, and the ability to absorb friction at sea without losing tempo. China has made the carrier race more serious. It has not yet settled the question that matters most.
